Elicit
An AI research assistant that reads and summarizes academic papers for you.
Overview
Elicit is built for a specific, high-stakes job: literature reviews and systematic research, where a made-up citation is a real problem rather than a minor annoyance. Every summary and extracted data point links back to the original paper with a supporting quote, which independent evaluations credit with sharply reducing hallucination risk compared to general chatbots pulling from training data. The free tier covers search and summaries; the paid tiers exist for volume and team use.
Key Features
Massive Paper Search: Unlimited search across 138M+ academic papers.
Cited Summaries: Paper summaries and full-text chat with citation links back to source.
Literature Reviews: Systematic literature review and data extraction from papers and figures.
Research Agent: A Research Agent for multi-step research tasks.
Reference Tools: Zotero import and API access.
Pricing
Starting price
$49/mo
Basic: Free. Limited usage for Research Agent and Research Reports, unlimited search, summaries, and paper chat, Zotero import.
Pro: $49/month, billed annually at $588/year. Standard usage for Research Agent, Reports, and Systematic Literature Reviews; screen up to 5,000 papers, 20 columns per table, 10 research alerts, API access.
Scale: $169/month, billed annually at $2,028/year. 5x usage across Research Agent, Reports, and reviews; extraction from figures, live team collaboration, 30 columns per table, admin panel.
Enterprise: Custom pricing. Custom usage levels, unlimited paper alerts, screening up to 40,000 papers, SSO/SAML, dedicated customer success team.
Disclaimer: pricing may change, confirm on Elicit's own pricing page before buying.
Pros
Strong Accuracy: Strong accuracy numbers in independent evaluation, up to 94-99% across search, screening, and extraction tasks in one benchmark against Cochrane reviews.
Traceable Answers: Every output traces back to a real, indexed paper with a quote, unlike general LLMs that can fabricate references.
Generous Free Tier: Covers search, summaries, and light chat use.
Cons
Coverage Gaps: Coverage gaps on very recent publications not yet indexed.
Still Needs Review: Human verification is still explicitly recommended before publishing findings, so it's not a replace-the-researcher tool.
Price Jump: The $49/month Pro tier is a real jump for individual researchers coming from a free workflow.
What Makes It Unique
Quote-Backed Claims: Its citation-linked, quote-backed answers are the real differentiator, most AI research tools summarize papers, Elicit shows you exactly which sentence in which paper backs every claim it makes.
Kay Score
8
/ 10
Tool Information
Pricing
$49/mo
Category
Research & Productivity
Platform
Web / iOS / Android
Last Updated
